OK everybody, not that I don't believe in miracles but...
lets say the odds of surviving an operation are 1 in a hundred. Well... there is still the chance that the person is going to survive. So is it a miracle that the person survives if the person does survive? Absolutely not. He just got the positive side of the odds. We cannot assume that beating the odds is always a miracle, because that would imply there are really no odds, which is the most irrational, insane thing I'd've ever allowed myself to conceive. Completely pathetic to neglect the mathematical/probability functions of the universe.
That's like saying, if I roll two dice. The odds have been empirically proven that I will roll a seven at a 15% rate. And it is hardest to roll a twelve or a two. So, lets say I have one shot at rolling a twelve and I happen to get the twelve. Is that a miracle? No! I just got the odds I wanted. How is this situation with the dice any empirically different from the operation scenario?
There is no difference. There are just the odds and one chance. You'll find that if you undergone the operation and got 100 chances and had 100 lives, you'd only survive roughly one of them based on the statistics of other people's operations. If you can convince me that it was a miracle that I got to survive the operation, it is nothing more than beating the odds.
There are some things in life that we must accept can be scientifically proven that refute spiritual claims. For example, out of body experiences. Science is coming close to figuring out why we have out of body experiences. We can even induce people to having them at will.
We can explain why everything happens if we just put our minds to it. What would we prefer; a why that doesn't elaborate, or a why that allows us to go further and manipulate the potential of the answer.
eace:
lets say the odds of surviving an operation are 1 in a hundred. Well... there is still the chance that the person is going to survive. So is it a miracle that the person survives if the person does survive? Absolutely not. He just got the positive side of the odds. We cannot assume that beating the odds is always a miracle, because that would imply there are really no odds, which is the most irrational, insane thing I'd've ever allowed myself to conceive. Completely pathetic to neglect the mathematical/probability functions of the universe.
That's like saying, if I roll two dice. The odds have been empirically proven that I will roll a seven at a 15% rate. And it is hardest to roll a twelve or a two. So, lets say I have one shot at rolling a twelve and I happen to get the twelve. Is that a miracle? No! I just got the odds I wanted. How is this situation with the dice any empirically different from the operation scenario?
There is no difference. There are just the odds and one chance. You'll find that if you undergone the operation and got 100 chances and had 100 lives, you'd only survive roughly one of them based on the statistics of other people's operations. If you can convince me that it was a miracle that I got to survive the operation, it is nothing more than beating the odds.
There are some things in life that we must accept can be scientifically proven that refute spiritual claims. For example, out of body experiences. Science is coming close to figuring out why we have out of body experiences. We can even induce people to having them at will.
We can explain why everything happens if we just put our minds to it. What would we prefer; a why that doesn't elaborate, or a why that allows us to go further and manipulate the potential of the answer.